Anobit acquisition could be the biggest purchase of a hardware maker in Apple's history

Apple, Inc. (AAPL) can't hide its love flash. Apple is immersed in a over decade long passionate affair with NAND flash memory, which it uses for storage across all of its mobile devices and in its computer SSDs.

I. Apple Pulls an OCZ

Now Apple is reportedly in talks to absorb a major part of its flash supply chain, and is reportedly in talks to purchase Israeli flash memory fabless chipmaker Anobit.

Anobit is a small firm founded in 2006 in Herzeliya Pituach -- an affluent beach-side district on central Israel's Mediterranean coast. Today the company operates subsidiaries in the U.S. and South Korea. Its core business is the tiny chips that allow super-fast, reliable access to flash memory, flash memory controllers.

Apple already licenses Anobit's controllers for use in its iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air.

A good flash controller is incredibly valuable to SSD makers or companies who use flash components in their devices. Just ask OCZ Technology Group Inc. (OCZ), whose SSDs have been dominating the enthusiast market, thanks to their slick Indilinx controller, which suffers little of the bugginess of LSI Corp. (LSI) subsidiary SandForce's controllers.

OCZ apparently found the South Korean controller maker Indilinx so invaluable that it bought it (and its 20 patents) for $32M USD in stock. This purchase was followed in turn by LSI's $322M USD acquisition of SandForce, a deal driven by SandForce's broad market base, which offset its poor controller stability.

Now Apple is expected to follow in suit, potentially folding in Anobit to prevent competitors from gaining access to its technology. News of the deal broke [translated] from the the Israeli publication Calcalist.

Reportedly the acquisition price could hit as high as $400M-$500M USD, a boon for Anobit investors, who have thus far poured $97M USD in venture capital into the startup. The acquisition would also grant Apple control of Anobit's 21 patents (and the 74 more currently in the submissions process).

Anobit has a very valuable specialty, which could drive Apple to make the purchase. Reportedly, its technology for detecting "bad" memory cells in MLC (multi-level cell) flash memory is the best in the industry. That allows cheap MLC to replicate the typically far-better endurance of expensive SLC (single-level cell) flash. Long-term longevity is still a concern for flash drives, so this is a very valuable technology.

That comes in handy for Anobit's enterprise offerings, which promise "4 Terabytes write per day for 5 years". With Apple increasingly deploying storage-heavy large-scale data centers to support technologies like the iCloud, this could come in handy. If the reliability issues could be removed, Apple could switch its servers over to using solid state drives (flash prices allowing) removing one more piece of the latency equation for its cloud users.

The core specs on Anobit's embedded controller (used in the aforementioned MacBook Air, iPad, and iPhone) are pretty sweet to:

666 MB/s data transfers

Works with up to 256 GB / 16 dies of NAND

"Ultra low" power consumption

Support for 20nm and sub-20nm NAND

Dual host interface (provides faster data piping to the rest of the system)

Anobit claims its controller is the "highest performance" tablet or smartphone flash storage controller. We're sure some other companies would disagree with that assessment, but it's at least safe to say that Anobit is no performance slouch.

Anobit is a fabless firm, which means it lacks chip production capacity of its own, instead paying third parties chip fabricators like GlobalFoundries Inc. to actually put its proprietary designs onto chips.

We'll keep you updated if Apple goes through with its reported plan to fold in this crucial piece of its flash supply chain.

If Anobit has licensing arrangements with other companies those licence obligations will pass to Apple. I suspect that what Apple is interested in is the potential of Anobit, what it has in it's pipeline, what Apple wants for its future products. That of course it won't licence.

Apple have a very, very conservative approach to acquisitions, especially compared to other big tech companies, for example Google which does constantly buy companies to shut out competition which it cannot kill through offering a free alternative.

Apple buy very few companies and their purchases are always strategic investments in their own products. If you track all of Apple's acquisitions in recent years you see the results of that acquisition appearing in the evolution of Apple's products not too long after (18 months sort of time frame). It's what makes watching Apple's acquisitions so interesting, its an indicator of some product development to come.

What Apple has done with Anobit is perfectly ordinary business practice, a practice which is carried on at a much, much larger scale by all their competitors all the time. Just look at a list of acquisitions in the last 5 years by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc. Apple's acquisitions are a fraction of everyone else's.

You iPhobes are such pussies, whining and weeping about everything Apple does when what really twists your guts is that Apple plays to win and mostly does, that Apple are simply better at what they do than their competitors.

quote: To think shutting out competition is OK is absolutely sickening

Yeah tell that to MS when they were shutting out competition by prohibiting alternative operating system installs for OEMs they were dealing with in 1980s-1990s, you hypocritical jerk.

Every single company in business is trying hard to kill competition, this is natural selection working in business, and you only single out Apple because you're a dumb fanatic. MS is no better, Google is no better, or anyone else. They all wanna kill competition as bad as Apple does. You have to grow up to understand this.

Will you cry me a river, baby, because Google refuses to license their page ranking and ad relevance analysis algoritms to Bing? Will you, baby? ;))) You gonna cry now because Google is such a bad boy, they try to kill poor little Bing, boohoo...

And you are a dumb Apple hater who lost any reasoning skills a long time ago, otherwise you wouldn't single out Apple like they are something special. They are as tough with their competitors as any other US company, why you Apple hating idiots insist they are unique in some way is beyond me.

Hey retro, can you explain this thing to me? Why is cheesy singling out Apple like the other US companies are not tough with competitors and only Apple is the tough one? Do you understand this or are you as lost with cheesy's "logic" as me?

quote: Hey retro, can you explain this thing to me? Why is cheesy singling out Apple like the other US companies are not tough with competitors and only Apple is the tough one? Do you understand this or are you as lost with cheesy's "logic" as me?

Because today's article was about Apple, which is why you find the title at the top of the page saying that.

American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system; the iTunes media browser; the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity software; the iWork suite of productivity software; Aperture, a professional photography package; Final Cut Studio, a suite of professional audio and film-industry software products; Logic Studio, a suite of music production tools; the Safari web browser; and iOS, a mobile operating system. As of July 2011, the company operates 357 retail stores in ten countries.

You think your swearing and no arguments beside it will make you look stronger? Naive kiddy. Judging by style of the posts alone Tony is looking way more mature than you. Learn to post substance instead of your usual argumentless dirty garbage.

"Hey retro, can you explain this thing to me? Why is cheesy singling out Apple like the other US companies are not tough with competitors and only Apple is the tough one? Do you understand this or are you as lost with cheesy's "logic" as me? "

Dont get me caught up in your convoluted logic, and you are the last person that should be insulting anyone else's reasoning skills (How's RIM workin out for ya?)

Working out quite well, thank you, Playbook is still the best tablet, tried some Android HTC tablet yesterday in an AT&T store and Galaxy Tab 10.1 too - both still shitty and slow compared to QNX. Nothing new here retro, move along :)

Yup, now stock has dropped to 1/10th its previous high. From 150 to 15 in 3 years. No problem at all because the palybook is the best tablet on the market. So good they can charge $499 for a 7 incher... Oh, wait. it was selling so badly they had to drop it to $199. ROFL.

Great, keep on with the "pick and choose" facts. Its working wonders for Balsilie and Lazardis. Most noteworthy is revenue. Its absolutely tanking in a majorly bad way , yet, if you just look at 1 quarter, and only present that data, everything is fine. No problem here.

Still the same old song. Just like the Iraqi minister of communications, insisting they are winning the war and have beaten the US troops back to the border as US tanks roll by outside of his office.

quote: After years of inferior product, sagging earnings, recent unexplained multiple continent outages and product delays, RIM executives this week capped off a disastrous 2011 with more bad news. The company shattered any hope of seriously competing with iOS and Android in 2012 with the news that their Blackberry 10 smartphones, originally slated for "early 2012" are delayed until late 2012 (read: 2013). The company also took an un-needed PR hit last week when two drunk executives were forced off a flight for being violently and ridiculously drunk. The reality-TV meets AOL level of total dysfunction has more than a few people wondering exactly how RIM co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie still have jobs.

IOS was intro's in early 2007 and released in June 2007. Even slow as molasses Palm came out with a competing offer 2 years later (WebOS) - and they are totally disfunctional. Its now been almost 5 years and RIM still has no Phone OS to match.

Beyond that, what is taking them so long with QNX. It WAS released on the playbook earlier this year in at least decent form. Its not getting great reviews, but it is a good OS with alot of promise. What is taking 1 1/2 years from Playbooks working QNX release to get it on a freegin phone? WTF!!! , by the time they release it, we may not be looking at IOS6 and Android 5 like I originally thought... We will be looking at IOS7 and Android 6.

Hold it cheesy, hold it right there, otherwise you'll go too far by saying RIM doesn't sell 'cause it's shit and hence Apple sells so much stuff because their stuff is the best! Then you'll look like a total dumbo 'cause you also troll them all the time hehehe :) Wanna look like an idiot one more time eh cheesy?

quote: You iPhobes are such pussies, whining and weeping about everything Apple does when what really twists your guts is that Apple plays to win and mostly does, that Apple are simply better at what they do than their competitors.

quote: You iPhobes are such pussies, whining and weeping about everything Apple does when what really twists your guts is that Apple plays to win and mostly does, that Apple are simply better at what they do than their competitors.

Oh boy, you sure showed everyone. Damn, with all this knowledge about Apple you must be making so much money. No? Well at least you're an informed investor trading their stock. No? Well at least you're an investor. No? You're just wasting your life worshipping a plastic toy? I bet when your family and your children (haha you won't breed) look back they will say "Damn, that Tony he really did something important with his life."

No? Not that either?

Loser. You're the definition of loser. You dedicate yourself to a for profit company that offers you nothing in return. You're like those losers that waste their time and money showing up to every Apple store opening. It's like a religion. Except there's only one rule. Worship a plastic toy that makes fart sounds, sends email and that you can play terrible games on. All the good feelings and self importance you give yourself when you talk and experience things Apple are creations of your own delusional and desperate mind. Why? Because your life sucks.

His responses are the SAME EVERYDAY , there is NO intelligence, and you certainly have none and that has been proven over and over. Yet, you still keep yapping your flap like you have something to contribute. Also, 99.9 percent of your posts are for, guess what? APPLE! You aren't liked here by ANYONE, the sheer amount of -1's should give you a clue of that. I swear, you and Tony both have some serious MENTAL issues.

You can swear all you want but your unobjectivity shines here, the fact is that you only troll Apple and never troll any other US company that behaves the same speaks eveything about who you really are.

You're like that but replace Zune with anything Apple. It's scary and I feel sorry for you. But you're not alone, there's many losers like you worshipping Apple. Not many people (except for Zune guy) will do the same for Microsoft because they realize that it's just a product. It's meant to be used for work.

But you don't. You're so passionate to the point where you troll these forums. I don't think I've ever seen an article without you commenting in some way or form about Apple.

I feel very very sorry for you. I pity you. It must suck living your life as a loser and your only source of passion and happiness is talking about Apple products and Apple Corporation.